Volkswagen has waived its right to appeal in two diesel compensation cases in Germany, Reuters reports, marking the first time that the automaker will offer vehicle buybacks to owners outside the U.S. The automaker has decided not to challenge two local court decisions in the towns of Arnsberg and Bayreuth, in which VW diesel owners had won the right to be compensated. The decision represents a sharp turn for VW, which has consistently claimed the 8.5 million affected European-market cars had not violated European Union environmental regulations.

Still, the two court decisions are not expected to open the floodgates to massive buybacks: VW reportedly made this decision partially due to the low value of the specific cars in question. Additionally, the EU legal framework concerning consumer liability and class action suits is very different from the U.S. The diesel issue in Europe is being addressed by a free software and hardware update at dealerships, which was approved before a substantially different technical fix was greenlit by EPA and CARB for the U.S. This means that owners of affected VW diesels in Europe have had to sue the automaker in local courts for vastly different forms of redress and using different legal claims.

Consumer groups in Europe, some supported by high-ranking EU officials, have been pushing for over a year for the automaker to compensate the affected owners in some way given the significant monetary payments that VW has committed to the U.S. In particular, EU industry chief Elzbieta Bienkowska has been publicly calling for the automaker to compensate owners in the EU despite the different regulatory regimes. In absence of progress, EU officials have also been working to implement stricter emissions regulations that will make diesel engines financially unappealing technology for automakers, in addition to a significant push for more electric cars.

"Diesel will not disappear from one day to another," Bienkowska said to EU lawmakers in April of this year, Reuters reported. "But after this year of work ... I am quite sure they will disappear much faster than we can imagine."

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